Batteries are carried by most vehicles, including most wheeled and tracked vehicles, in order to provide power in at least certain circumstances. For example, the batteries may provide the power necessary for starting the vehicle or for operating various electrical devices in instances in which the engine is not running. In order to provide power to the various electrical systems of a vehicle, batteries typically have a power interface via which an electrical connection is established between the battery and the various electrical devices of the vehicle. Some batteries also have other interfaces, such as fluid interfaces and data interfaces. A fluid interface permits a coolant fluid to be circulated from the vehicle to the battery prior to being returned to the vehicle. By appropriately controlling the temperature of the coolant fluid prior to its delivery to the battery, the coolant fluid may serve to cool the battery so as to facilitate the operation of the battery. With respect to a data interface, some batteries include a memory device for storing certain types of data, such as temperature, current and voltage. As such, a data interface permits the vehicle, such as a computer system onboard the vehicle, to retrieve data from the battery and/or to write data to the battery via the data interface.
Although batteries may each have a power interface and may sometimes have a fluid interface and/or a data interface, vehicular platforms are commonly designed to have differently configured battery interfaces. Thus, even though the batteries onboard different types of vehicular platforms may each include power, fluid and data interfaces, the interfaces may be differently designed for each vehicular platform. Not only does the design of a new configuration for the interfaces increase the costs associated with the design of a new vehicular platform, but the differences between the battery interfaces may create other disadvantages.
In this regard, the use of different battery interfaces limits or prevents scalability. Indeed, since many vehicles are designed to have a particular engine and power solution that is unique to that type of vehicle, the power solution including the unique battery interfaces will not apply to vehicles having power solutions with different sizes or capabilities, thereby requiring additional design efforts in conjunction with vehicles having the different power solutions. Additionally, the relatively limited interchangeability of batteries and battery interfaces between different vehicular platforms generally increases the costs required from a maintainability standpoint since those involved with the maintenance of the vehicles must be trained so as to work on a wider variety of vehicles having a number of different battery configurations and interfaces. Since many vehicles are based on a predefined power storage solution, including a particular configuration of batteries and an alternator, it may be difficult to upgrade or reconfigure the power storage solution to incorporate advancements in technology and/or to support different mission power profiles. For example, as the anticipated power demands upon the vehicle change over the course of time, such as in instances in which the vehicle is assigned to different missions, the unique design of many power storage solutions may prove to be difficult to adapt or to reconfigure to be more closely tailored to the changed power requirements.
As such, it would be desirable to provide an improved power system for a vehicle that is more readily scalable and maintainable. In addition, it would be desirable to provide an improved power system that could be more readily tailored to changes in the anticipated power requirements for the vehicle, such as in instances in which the mission to which the vehicle is assigned is changed.